Showing results by narrator "Caroline Lennon" in All Categories

For 13 years Pen and Cara have had a tumultuous relationship crammed with bickering and intimacy, recrimination and desire. When Cara dies in a car crash, Pen is left to cope with a secret widowhood. Along with that burden comes a hidden story of painful and pleasurable memories. With humour and poignancy, Hood follows Pen through the week of Cara’s death; through the paralysis of grief and the ecstasy of nostalgia to a point where mourning and making a new life melt into one.

Everything changes for Kate, Moya and Romy when they receive word that Maeve Dillon, their mother, is critically ill. It is time to return from Dublin, London and New York to Rossmore and the old stone house overlooking the Irish Sea where they grew up. But ancient jealousies surface as each sister confronts the past and the decisions they have made.

Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. In the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard. Only Henry is dead. He died two months earlier, leaving a huge hole in Grace's heart. But then Henry turns up to fix the boiler one evening, and Grace can't decide if she's hallucinating or has suddenly developed psychic powers....

It's the week before Christmas. Catherine Berlin sits alone gazing at a bank of monitors, each capturing a slice of a vast industrial estate. A van appears: two men delivering crates, moving quickly. Her boss tells her to ignore them, but she can't. Berlin's scars have faded, but she still walks with a limp. Broke, she's working nights as a relief CCTV operator, and looking for something more substantial. Her heroin habit is under control - only just. The night shifts end, but now Berlin herself is being watched.

Kate Cassidy is about to celebrate 25 years of marriage to Paddy. But the secret she has kept all this time is about to be discovered. Erin Harris has always known that she is different from the rest of her family. Over the years she has begun to put the pieces together, and now she has to discover who she really is and where she comes from. Nina Harris has always put her marriage and family before everything. But now she must face up to the truth as her daughter is prepared to run off and search for a woman she doesn't know.

Tessa's life as an activist and volunteer worker takes a hit after a fall. At the ripe young age of 69, she's no longer able to live alone and decides to take in two lodgers for free. After the recent death of his brother, Conn is riddled with grief and determined to make amends. A free room seems too good to be true—until he meets the other lodger.

When Maggie loses a lucrative contract for her P.I. agency due to an accidental full frontal flashing, she’s forced to accept the only other job on offer: one involving her nemesis, the pampered show cat, Quibbles. Maggie and her wacky associate Lenny are hired to escort Quibbles to the final round of auditions to become the face of a luxury cat food brand, Purrfect Paws. Instead of the five-star hotel they were promised, Maggie and Lenny find themselves trapped in a run-down hostelry in the middle of a hurricane.

Molly's perfect life comes crashing down following the unexpected death of her husband David. She is left alone with a big, old house to maintain, finances in disarray and her hopes for happiness in a heap. But Molly is a survivor. Despite objections from her two daughters, Molly fears that the only solution will be to sell their beloved home.

Alison's American dream is in tatters. Her high-flying career is on the skids, and her Upper East Side apartment is now way beyond her means. But pride prevents her from telling her family back home just how bad things are.

Life is looking up for Saffy. After six years it seems like her boyfriend, Greg, is going to propose. Things couldn’t be more different for Conor and Jess. Even after seven happy years and two kids, she won't get married. But everyone's keeping secrets, and things aren’t quite what they seem. It's going to take some tough questions, and even tougher answers, before anyone's being honest - even with themselves. Postcards from the Heart is a book about four friends in their thirties. It's about love, lust, life, death, balloon rides and missing hamsters.

Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, Emma Donoghue has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles. Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum.

St Brigid's Island lies off the west coast of Ireland, and by 1960 it is a community in decline. It possesses no modern conveniences; there are also no doctors, priests, running water or electricity. The government wants the island evacuated, but those who have refused to go cling hard to their traditions. Among those remaining families are two sisters, Rose and Emer. Rose is beautiful, blessed with fertility and a deep love for her husband, but her sister, Emer, is cursed with both being unlovely and possessing a punishing gift.

Journalist Claudia Kelly loves her work at one of Dublin's best magazines but when she is tasked with editing Irish Man, she's unsure she's up to the big job. But when her former childhood neighbour, the handsome artist Johnny Hogan returns home, he and Claudia immediately resume their old friendship and he encourages her to take the role. With an impending hostile boardroom takeover, Claudia is forced to pick a side whilst navigating her mother's new romance and her sister Fiona's earth-shattering secret.

A widow spends weeks haunting a cemetery, desperate to track down an unknown woman who keeps leaving flowers on her husband’s grave; A daughter searches a foreign city for her father, trying to understand why he disappeared forty-five years ago; A former gay lover of Roger Casement stands among the crowds at his state funeral in 1965, paying silent homage to the closeted world they were forced to inhabit at the dawning of the Irish State. A writer at a book launch comes face to face with the person secretly responsible for his success.

Lissadell House, Sligo, 1915. In the Big House, young housemaid Lily feels life is changing for everyone—and she fears for her new friend Sam and his choices. Plans are also being made for Maeve de Markievicz, daughter of the famous Countess, whether she likes it or not. Can Lily help her friend without getting into too much trouble? All the while, Lily knows she has a chance to grab hold of her own special dreams, as long as nothing goes wrong. With friendship they can face anything.

In early 2018, Erin Darcy created an online art project, "In Her Shoes – Women of the Eighth", to safely and anonymously share private stories of the real and devastating impact of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. In the five months leading up to the referendum on abortion, the project asked a simple question of undecided voters: put yourself in her shoes. Within weeks, Erin was receiving hundreds of stories from a broad spectrum of experiences of planned and unplanned terminations.

Annie Madden and her husband, Peter, seemed to have the perfect life: two beautiful children, a wonderful home and each other. That was before everything changed. Now Annie must face a different future, after a devastating event casts a shadow over her family and their future. When she is offered the chance to pick up her previous career as a writer, Annie is reluctant. Hollywood bad-boy Senan Donnelly has scared off every other ghost-writer who has tried to tell his story, so why would she be any different?

This latest instalment in the popular series sees Lily finally on her way to realising her dream of becoming a teacher. Nellie's older sister, Johanna, starts walking out with Harry the footman, and is extremely worried when he enlists and goes off to fight in World War I. He send letters to the girls from the front and tells them all about the Christmas Day truce in 1914...but then a telegram comes. Harry is missing, presumed dead. Will he return to Lissadell, safe and sound?

What if something happened long ago that still makes you sad? Graham is Molly and Beth’s favourite uncle, so they really want to help him fix the past – and as the girls know of a mysterious door that can take them back in time, maybe they can! But how can they find who they’re looking for without apps or social media? And what will the girls make of the '60s, where the hairstyles are wild, the slang is weird and no one’s heard of ciabatta?

Twenty essays on Irish women, historical and contemporary, who have defied cultural norms around femininity and achieved great things. The subjects include Irish women from Queen Medb to Eileen Gray, from Constance Markievicz to Sonia O’Sullivan, covering stateswomen, artists, writers, activists and rebels of all kinds. Written by multi-award-winning author and first Laureate na nÓg (Irish Children’s Laureate) Siobhán Parkinson. Perfect for use in schools as well as for leisure listening, this collection celebrates the role of women in Ireland’s changing society.